Cuddles

by Dennis Fueyo

  Sweltering heat exploded outward in a pyroclastic flow covering Emelia and Sam with first-degree burns. Sam’s eyes shut against the flash of light. Emelia forced hers to remain open, staring in awe at the giant lioness. It lifted its head and licked green-stained lips.

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  Cuddles began feasting on the bear’s carcass. “My, what a tasty morsel.”

  “You must save him! Save my Sam!”

  The black lioness tore at the muckbear’s muscular back, leaving strands of skin and ligaments about the ground in a green and red display.

  “Please!” Emelia begged.

  “I am hungry, Emelia Stone. I need to eat.”

  “Look at him,” she cried and motioned down over Sam’s mangled body. He looked as if dropped into a snarled blender packed with shards of glass.

  “Oh, he does look tasty! But this meat is much sweeter.”

  “He is going to die, sentinel!”

  The lioness lunged over the dead bear and spoke to her close enough to smell the rotting flesh in its teeth. “I—am—Cuddles. You know me, Emelia Stone.” Cuddles then looked at the bloody mess of Sam and frowned. “Oh, poor, poor child. True, he does not look long for this world, I think that. I am so sorry. This is out of my skill, Emelia Stone.”

  “You…you must be able to do something,” she said while tears dripped in sheets down her face.

  “I could. It would not be a good idea.”

  “Could what?”

  “Hmmm, maybe.” The great cat circled around. Nine-feet tall at the shoulder and not a pebble shook with each step. The perfect killing machine.

  “Please elaborate, Cuddles?”

  “Thank you, Emelia Stone. We are becoming friends, I think that.”

  Cuddles plopped down, observing Sam’s breaths shallow, and began grooming a paw matted with chunks of muck bear. “If I bond with Sam Mason, he will never be the same. He will not be what you fell in love with.”

  “Bond with him. Save him. I don’t care if you taint his soul with your evil mind, his heart belongs to me now.”

  “My mind is no more wicked than our natural world. Sam Mason will, actually, become like you.”

  Emelia knew what Cuddles meant, but the jab stung. Sam would become something that was not human, more powerful. And Cuddles would no longer be a sentinel. Already deemed an outsider, the sentinel would become something others would consider repugnant.

  Sam struggled again to open his eyes; seeing the enormous black creature sit before him raised a smile. “Are you Cuddles? The thing my dad talked about?”

  The creature purred and nodded.

  “Are you here to take me away?”

  “No, child.”

  “What about Dad?”

  “He is with me now, Sam Mason. As Lou Frasier is with Apsu.”

  “Did you destroy Rickettserax?”

  “It is quite filling, Sam Mason. No longer to pester humans.”

  “Thank you.” Sam struggled to maintain consciousness and asked, “You know Apsu?”

  “One of the most ancient of our race. The Atlantians name themselves to honor Apsu’s past. Enough about these things, what should we do with you?”

  Sam flinched, holding his wound, and jerked forward. “It hurts, Cuddles. It hurts everywhere.”

  Emelia scooped up his hand and kissed his bloody fingers.

  “Emelia, honey. It hurts so bad.” Sam could feel his ribs scraped and pectorals torn, one shoulder joint knocked loose and lungs folding inward. “Cuddles must take my pain away.”

  “No!” Emelia slapped the ground. Looking to the great cat, she pointed a lacerated finger and said, “You made a bargain. Tom Mason died for it. You will honor it!”

  Sam rolled his neck and said, “I cannot leave Emelia. I need to live…” He struggled to rise only to crash back down. “Emelia, I am so sorry, I will not be able to walk away from this one. Not going to make it.”

  The great cat rose and stepped cautiously to Sam’s other side. “Never you mind, Sam Mason.” Arching its black, furry back and stretching out dagger-like claws, Cuddles said, “I will not lie, this is going to kill you, but I did make a bargain with your father, and I will honor it. I will bring you back from death.”

  Sam reached out and held onto a handful of fur. It felt soft, groomed, as if no speck of mud or fluids ever smeared across it. “You plan to absorb me?”

  “We need you alive, don’t we?”

  “But why?”

  “To save you.”

  “No, why save me, Cuddles? Rickettserax is dead. I am no longer needed in this game.”

  “Oh? And letting you die would improve nothing, I think that.”

  “I am a lower lifeform. You are a sentinel. I do not have special powers. You are superior to me.”

  Cuddles shook its massive head, folding pointed cat ears backward. “This journey was made by you, Sam Mason. I will help you however I can, no matter how superior you think I am to you. Both of us alive makes the world a better place, I think that.”

  Lowering its head close, ears perking forward, Sam felt Cuddles’ breath on his chest.

  “This is going to hurt, Sam Mason. A lot.”

  Its form dissipated into a shrouded black fog. Sticky droplets adhered to Sam’s body; foul-smelling condensate beaded on his face. Emelia heard Sam utter “Dadda?” as the fog whipped into a funnel, tunneling down his throat like a Xenomorph facehugger proboscis. Pushing into his gullet, the fog disappeared. His head relaxed to one side. An exhale sighed out and his lungs collapsed.

  “Oh, God, no, no, no!” Emelia slapped his cheeks in rapid taps. “Sam! Wake up!” She dropped an ear to his mouth and shook his shoulders.

  “Sam! Please, Sam! Wake up!”

  Sam’s eyes popped open and pupils dilated to capture orange rays of city lights reflecting off the clouds and puncturing the forest. His chest lifted, lungs unrolling to draw in a sizable draft full of air. Blood stopped oozing from his lacerations, coagulating in each wound to dry and create a crimson shell. Dislocated joints snapped back in place. Tendons stitched their tears.

  “Sam?” Emelia wiped away the ponding around her eyes. “How do you feel?”

  Sam looked at her, through her, to the stars beyond. A cosmic dance of birthing stars and black holes twirled in connected arms of dark matter. Charged antimatter spewed out neutron stars, and counterparts of subatomic particles fell from decaying atoms across the universe. He felt everything like hair standing on his arm.

  “I feel great!”

  “You do?” Emelia cleaned his cheek and laughed. “You feel great?”

  “Like a supernova extending beyond time itself!” He gently brushed her hand away and held it, then bounced up and exclaimed, “I feel like I could climb the highest mountains! Trek the widest deserts! Damn Emelia, I feel like I could do anything!”

  She threw her arms around his neck and cried, “Oh Sam, you can do anything and I’m going to be right there with you.”

  He flung an arm around her and held her close. “You and me, Emelia, I want to be with you, always.”

  “Always, Sammy!” She shoved her face into his neck, bawling. “Don’t leave me again.”

  His own tears dripped into her hair. Sam affirmed, “Never. Time mends memories. Children lift minds. Hands build bridges. Love powers all. Apsu said that, you know. I understand it now.”

  He then rubbed his stomach. “I’m hungry.”

  “Hungry?” Emelia pulled back, eyeing his circulating hand.

  The muckbear’s carcass caught his eye. “Oh, man. That looks good! Do you mind if I get some energy back? I’m starved.”

  “No,” she replied. “Go…go ahead.”

  “Thanks!” Sam bounced to the mound of dead muckbear and proceeded to rip it apart, digging out handfuls of flesh at a time and snapping rib bones to suck out the marrow. “Oh, man! It tastes good!”

  Then he uttered a sound she did not want to hear, “Oh, yummy, it’s delicious!”

&
nbsp; “Cuddles?” She inched forward and asked, “Cuddles, are you there?”

  “Doesn’t want to talk, eating.” Sam peeled away more skin, dug into the bear’s shoulder and pulled out gobs of stringy muscle. “Oh, jeez, it tastes sweet! Rickettserax provided the perfect flavor. So much evil, such delicious meat.” He said with his mouth full, “I’ll be done in a minute.”

  “Sam, I’ll be right back. Going to go find my contact.”

  A withered, grey arm shot from the soil and latched to her leg.

  “Just wait a minute”—Sam swallowed—"I’m almost done.”

  Emelia crowbarred the hand off. “What the hell!”

  Dozens more reached out of the ground and palmed her leg, careful not to dig long talon-like claws into her skin. But Emelia was not scared, angry, or confused.

  She was annoyed.

  Folding her arms, Emelia said, “We need to discuss boundaries, sentinel.”

  A tilted grin spread on Sam’s face covered in muckbear tissue. “Clever girl, Emelia Stone. Let me eat.

  “Then, we can strike a bargain.”

  Conclusion

  Emelia Stone found Juan Delgado unconscious wedged in a pile of wreckage not far from where the boat had been destroyed. Sam Mason carried Juan to the shop’s porch as if helium filled his body cavity. The butcher, an agent serving Jonathon Stone, finally uncovered her ears and opened the door. Sam lay Juan down on her finest mattress, an old mildew-saturated comforter stuffed with turkey vulture feathers, and left.

  Emelia stayed with the butcher and they measured risk between few options that led back to Raleigh over a cup of mint tea. She handed the butcher a letter written by Sam earlier that day and asked her to pass it to his mother, Lisa Mason. While an opaque path stretched out before her, the destination was clear. Carver Warden remained a threat, and they needed Jack Harr’s help to find him. But for now, she needed rest.

  Sam Mason buried his father’s body near the shop in a field of daylilies. On his command, dozens of ghoulish grey arms reached from the mud to scoop out a grave, then gently placed Tom Mason’s body inside. He could hear his dad’s spirit meet and interact with the other energies collectively forming his new roommate. Someday, as a cell dies in the body, Dr. Tom Mason’s energy would move on.

  Once an advocate for life, Sam savored the thrill of experiencing those little things passing by the rest of us. A crow sharing ribbon with its mate, an angelfish spinning around protecting its nest, a muckbear gauging its options. These reminded him of an interconnected web stretching around our planet. He found euphoria in the thrill of the chase, in applying those little things to gain an edge and reach victory, and strength surged in his character achieving status few could match.

  His victories, however, led to his ultimate defeat; preferring reliability to compassion and naively assuming the upper hand always held victory. Life was a game, and Sam’s choices derived from an unbendable desire to win the match. But games rely on probability, an outcome based on thousands of inputs each potentially shifting favor away from the anticipated conqueror. Everything changed in front of the rundown butcher’s shop on the Savannah River. He would never again win, nor lose. The words no longer had meaning.

  The physical world was nothing more to Sam than complex information interpreted by an observer—laws based on the observer’s limitations. The sentinel that called itself Cuddles, living in the dark recesses of his body, changed his perception. The rhythmic flexing of a cat’s tail or focused eyes of a relaxed squirrel meant little now. New wonder came from a disjointed shadow, misrouted soundwave, or glowing igneous stone. Things only seen by sentinels when objects interacted with their dimension. And what a beautiful dimension it was.